


Celtic Cross

by Yahtzee



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Tarot reading tells Scully more than she would have thought possible -- and more than the tarot reader would've thought possible, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celtic Cross

**Author's Note:**

  * For [handful_of_sky](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=handful_of_sky).



> Thanks to Seema G for the beta!

"Mulder isn't a a very good shopper," Scully said. "To put it lightly."

"Ohhh?" Madame Alix didn't seem overly concerned about the man who had hired her – or, for that matter, the woman she'd come to visit. Already she'd turned down the lights and spread a moth-eaten brocade cloth over Scully's scrubbed-clean oak table.

Blinking her eyes as Madame Alix lit a candle, Scully made a mental note to double-check all her silverware afterward. "He bought me a videotape of 'Superstars of the Super Bowls,' once. I'm not what you'd call a football fan."

"You know what they say." Madame Alix smiled, spreading her jade-ringed hands so that the bracelets around her wrists jangled. "It's the thought that counts."

She even had a silk scarf tied around her head; she might have been costumed for Halloween. At least she's not faking an accent, Scully thought, and she took her seat at the table, opposite Madame Alix, for her birthday treat: a tarot reading. Granted, they'd been busy --

(When aren't we busy? Is there an hour too late for Mulder to call with a UFO sighting? Is there a day that goes by when he doesn't drag us into yet another implausible investigation?)

\--but that wasn't fair, because they were busy with a real case now, the kind that even Skinner approved of. In the Maryland suburbs, someone was killing palm readers; due to the superficial similarity to the case Scully still thought of as "the Clyde Bruckman matter," they had been brought in to consult.

But instead of an X-File, they had a plain old serial killer. Instead of talking to psychics, they were performing autopsies, dusting for prints, authoring profiles. And instead of a real birthday celebration – not that Scully remembered exactly what one of those would be like – she would receive only the birthday card she'd found in Mulder's trenchcoat pocket yesterday, stamped, addressed and forgotten, plus one singularly ill-chosen tarot reading. She had left it in his pocket, awaiting the day he would finally remember to mail it. Next month, maybe.

I guess it beats bath salts, Scully decided.

Madame Alix's long, silver-painted nails flashed in the candlelight as she brought out her deck, wrapped in green silken cloth. "Do you have any incense, perhaps? Helps set the mood."

Scully did not lead the kind of life that included incense. "I have an Airwick air freshener."

"Well, we have a nice mood already, don't we, and you're already sitting down." She held out the deck to Scully and said, "Think hard upon your question – be as specific or as general as you like – and then cut the deck."

What question would she possibly want to ask? The ones that sprang to Scully's mind first ("How do you phrase responses to make them resonate with the largest possible number of gullible listeners?") would have been rude; Scully did not believe in any of the rigamarole unfurling at her own kitchen table, much less in Mulder's appalling taste in gifts, but she did believe in good manners where possible.

A fair question seemed to be: What was Mulder thinking when he bought me a tarot reading for my birthday?

Scully cut the deck, feeling for any notches or trick cards. There were none. Then again, with tarot cards, the trick wasn't in individual cards; it was in interpretation.

"Ahhh, very nice." Madame Alix began laying out the cards, forming a pattern Scully recognized from past X-Files research as the Celtic Cross. It was one of the more commonly used patterns, one of the ones people could learn from the pamphlets in Rider-Waite decks they might pick up for fun at Barnes &amp; Noble. Insights from the New Age aisle, Scully thought – coming right up.

I. The Covering

"This card," said Madame Alix, as she flipped the first one over, "will tell us about the present situation and its influences."

"The Ten of Wands." Scully looked down at the image of a young man carrying a bundle of ten sticks, a burden that appeared to be heavy for him.

"I prefer Staves, but no matter." Madame Alix's silver-tipped fingernail tapped on the tablecloth. "What do you know about this card?"

"Very little," Scully replied. It had not been adopted as a motif or signature by any of the serial killers they'd tracked in the past few years; as a result, she'd had no need to look it up.

"It's an interesting card, for this position. Makes me curious about your question. But you keep that to yourself. The Ten of Staves tells of great good fortune –"

"The man carrying the heavy bundle."

"If I may finish," Madame Alix said, so regally that Scully knew her skepticism had been noted – and disliked. "It is great good fortune that has become a burden, due to its demanding nature. It is something very successful, deeply rewarding, that nonetheless is beyond the control of its creator."

Perhaps sensing Scully's lack of engagement, Madame Alix added, "Sometimes this card tells of a lack of social life, due to the demands of a job. Have you perhaps been working very long hours?"

"Yes, I do," Scully said. She knew not to hand the reader any clues, but the stacks of files on her nearby desk would already have given that game away.

Deeply rewarding but uncontrollable – that did sound a lot like Mulder. But that was Scully's own imagination talking, not the cards.

II. The Crossing

"This card reveals the obstacles you face in your situation." Madame Alix shook her head sympathically; her hoop earrings wobbled in the candlelight. "Ahh, the Three of Swords."

This, too, was unfamiliar to Scully, but she figured that, as subtle symbols in divination went, a picture of three swords piercing a heart wasn't one. "This is pain, obviously. Heartbreak."

"Yes. That's the bad news."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "What exactly is the good news about having your heart impaled?"

"The three of swords tells of sorrow endured for a purpose. Much strife, many tears, even destruction of people and places held dear."

Taking that comment at all seriously – even allowing herself to mentally interpret it – would quickly be too much. "So this is like – dumping a bad boyfriend. You have some ice cream, cry at old movies for a week or two, and then you move on with your life."

"Perhaps it could be more significant than that. More powerful. But it says that great pain in your past is an obstacle to this current situation – but that it can possibly work in your favor. So maybe this is a good card."

Swords through the heart = good. Such is the life of the perpetually credulous, Scully thought.

Why on earth hadn't Mulder arranged for her to go to a shop or a salon for this? If the reading could tell her that, Scully decided, she'd forgive everything. But no, he had to surprise her at home, with something he had to suspect she wouldn't like, and that was not answerable by cards, tea leaves or even Mulder himself.

III. The Crown

"This card will tell us the best possible outcome for the situation. The most you can hope for. Some people find this a difficult moment in the reading – do you want to get yourself some water, a glass of tea? Best that you're settled and ready."

After impaling was good news, what could be bad? "Trust me, I'm fine. Turn it over."

The Ten of Pentacles looked cheery enough to Scully; people in a courtyard, sunshine and dogs, and money everywhere. It was the kind of card that could convince someone to buy a Lotto ticket. Scully invested her money in low-yield funds.

She expected Madame Alix to seize upon this and begin burbling away; instead, the woman frowned. "What's the matter?" Scully said. "Isn't that a good card?"

"It is an excellent card," Madame Alix answered, though her voice remained somewhat distant. "It portends – stability. Prosperity. Family. The beginnings of new traditions."

"Seems like the sky's the limit."

Apparently recovering herself, Madame Alix grinned through red-lacquered lips. "The Ten of Pentacles can even foretell a marriage."

Fortunately, the candlelight kept the illumination low enough that her blush was invisible. Scully only said, "Let's keep on."

Madame Alix stared down at the marriage card a moment longer, as if it had offended her somehow, before continuing.

Something is odd about this woman, Scully decided.

IV. The Root

"Certain past influences come to bear on all situations," the fortuneteller said. "We discover these through the fourth card. And here – we see great pain here."

"I guess so." A woman sat in her bed, hands to her face, nine swords hovering in the background. Had anyone ever done a study on tarot-card symbolism as it related to a preliterate society? Scully resolved to do some research on the subject.

"This person's past – the person in the question, whether that is you or another – is filled with suffering. The Nine of Swords tells us about deception, a life lived within lies, and about cruelty. There is loss here, great loss, the kind that haunts us throughout life."

And this was why tarot cards were popular, Scully thought: The symbolism could wrap itself around everyone – not a coat tailored to fit, but a blanket, loose until you pulled it close yourself. Those words couldn't help but remind her of Mulder, who had had so much taken away from him, so soon. When he lost Samantha, he lost any semblance of a life contained by truth.

"This card calls for overcoming sadness by faith," Madame Alix said.

I want to believe, Scully thought, remembering the poster, Mulder's credo, and the kind of life he lead.

Refusing to let sentiment take her over, she applied her reactions logically to the problem at hand. Tarot cards weren't instruments of divination, of course, but Scully had always believed that they operated as a kind of pre-Freudian psychotherapy – allowing people to look at problems and hopes in a slightly different light. If you didn't insist on dragging all of the psychic mumbo-jumbo into it, you could potentially get something from it.

So Mulder had a wretched childhood, by anyone's reckoning. Maybe that kind of emotional isolation doesn't turn anyone into the kind of person who can choose good presents. Maybe it's harder for him to really understand how I feel about him – or anything else, for that matter.

Ironically, Scully decided, Mulder's terrible present might in fact help her understand why he gave terrible presents. That would mean it wasn't such a terrible present after all.

But it was still a strange choice. Mulder might have more feasibly thought Scully was interested in football than in tarot cards. There were always hidden meanings – usually, of course, hidden much too well. It was worth asking why he had chosen this, trying to picture what he'd been thinking. There was a meaning here, Scully realized; she held that idea fast in her mind and focused.

VI. The Future

"Future events have their influence on the present, too," Madame Alix said. She gave Scully a thin, red smile. "Perhaps you don't believe in that kind of thing."

"I find that perfectly credible," Scully replied, folding her hands on the table. The brocade was soft beneath her palms. "Physicists tell us that the human perception of time is a fallacy – every event that has ever occurred or will ever occur 'exists' in a very real sense. Our concepts of past, present and future are simply artificial distinctions created by the human brain."

This did not appear to be the kind of validation Madame Alix sought. She seemed confused, even ill-at-ease, restless. Honestly, Scully, thought, this woman ought to work on her affect. This can't be good for business. Even the Palmistry Killer probably comes across with more charisma.

"And illuminating your future is – The Star." A naked woman poured water both into a stream and on the ground; a star-dappled sky unfurled above her. Obviously, this too was a happy card.

"Well, it looks like June is bustin' out all over." How comforting it would be to believe in such things, to see a card with a woman on it and be assured that the future was lovely.

"It promises renewal," Madame Alix said flatly. "Hope and faith, and a healing of old wounds. The fulfillment of a promise." She seemed almost angry to deliver this happy news, but then she relaxed and smiled. The candlelight made the shadowy wrinkles at the corners of her mouth darker. "But it cannot be said whether this renewal belongs to you, or the person you asked the question of – if it is someone else – or another person altogether. A person who has power over you, or who will."

The first reaction Scully had to this was an unwelcome mingling of the image on the card with Assistant Director Skinner. Her second reaction was that her relationship with Mulder was destined to take a turn for the – well, for the better, but sometimes it was hard to imagine anything ever changing between them.

Her third reaction was that no fortune-teller should be that displeased that a Querent was getting good cards. It didn't make sense – a true believer would accept whatever the cards said, regardless, and a shrewd profiteer would be glad that the customer was happy.

This woman – Madame Alix – expected Scully to have a bad future. She was, in fact, working to warp the cards against their clearest interpretations in order to try and justify that. They'd never met before that night, and if Scully had not bothered to hide her skepticism, she had at least been polite. So what was the problem?

She thought again about the Palmistry Killer. She thought about Mulder, researching on his own – with the unsent birthday card in his pocket. He would have had it with him as he went about, looking for a madman.

Or madwoman.

Maybe this tarot reading wasn't Mulder's gift at all.

VII. The Questioner

"This card is you," Madame Alix said, moving her hand from the central knot of cards to the four that still lay, backs up, in an isolated row on one side. She tapped the seventh card. "This tells us all about you."

"Then we'd better flip it over, hadn't we?" It was all Scully could do to feign interest in the reading. Her mind was busily doing calculations, going over the work she and Mulder had done in a whole new light:

They had, at an early stage in the process, conceded that a female killer was possible; none of the methods of homicide required considerable body strength, and the partial footprint they'd been able to lift at one scene was fairly small. Both she and Mulder had still thought a male killer more likely – males commit a high percentage of violent crimes, an even higher percentage of those not attributable to the influence of alcohol or drugs – but they'd never ruled a female out.

Remembering Clyde Bruckman, they'd both conceived of the killer as being someone angry with the palm readers – someone resentful for a future that hadn't come to pass, or perhaps one that had. But what if that wasn't it at all?

What if it was another fortune-teller seeking to eliminate the competition?

"The Queen of Swords. Quite impressive."

Scully tried to glance at it, to seem as though it intrigued her. "Crown – throne – very promising. Doesn't have much to do with my life, though."

"Don't be so modest. The Queen of Swords is a courageous woman – intelligent, complicated. She has gone through great sorrow, and yet she endures."

Great sorrow, yes, that's me, Scully thought, agreeing almost automatically while she studied Madame Alix's hands. The multicolored bangles around her wrists almost completely hid the rope burn – perhaps from the hanging of the third victim – but not quite. And the scarf that came so low over her forehead: Could it perhaps be concealing a bruise or cut on the forehead? An injury inflicted by one of the victims in self-defense?

"The Queen of Swords pays much attention to detail. She is an accurate person." Madame Alix gave Scully yet another insincere smile. "How does your attention to detail relate to your question?"

It makes me wonder how I never realized why Mulder gives rotten presents before, Scully thought. "It sheds a lot of light on that, actually."

Her gun was in its holster, beneath her jacket, lying across the chair about five feet away. How could she get to it without tipping off Madame Alix?

Because Scully was fairly sure that, while the woman across the room had no idea her true identity had been detected, she hadn't come here to do a reading and leave.

She'd come here to kill Scully. And there were only three cards left turned down on the table.

VIII. The House

 

If she's hurt Mulder –

\--but, of course, this woman had hurt Mulder. Scully knew that Madame Alix could have gotten her home address and her birthdate from only one place: the pocket of Mulder's trenchcoat. She imagined him hurt, bleeding, dying; the rage flowed into her own fear, adrenalin so thick that she had to fight to keep her hands from shaking.

"This card tells you about those near you," Madame Alix said. "Influences that surround you and can determine the outcome of the situation. What the card reveals can stand for the totality of circumstances – or, perhaps, an individual."

"That makes me a little nervous," Scully said. If the woman seated across from her had noticed her customer's – her prey's – unease, it would be best to give her an explanation for it. Also, she wanted to delay the turning of the card as long as possible. At least long enough for her to devise a plan for getting to the chair.

(But the gun is in the holster – is that snapped shut or not? If it's not, I can have the gun in my hand in three seconds. If it is, then it's going to take me longer.)

Three of the Palmistry Killer's victims had been garroted; the last one had been shot. That meant there was no guarantee Madame Alix didn't have a pistol with her right now or whether she was closer to her weapon than Scully was.

"No need to be nervous," Madame Alix said in a low voice. She flipped the card over, to reveal a rider upon a pale horse.

Scully named the card herself: "Death."

"Many people do become – unnerved – by this card. I've had that happen a number of times."

"You don't say." Scully began evaluating the likely weight of the table, the leverage of her chair. "But I'm well aware that the Death card doesn't always mean literal death. That's a common error – something petty criminals often trade in, to try and make themselves look or feel more important. Death actually means transformation. That a change is coming, something dramatic, but it could as easily be positive as negative."

Madame Alix nodded. "That's what it means sometimes. Other times, it just means – death."

The pretense that this was a birthday reading was undoubtedly about to end. Scully needed another minute's diversion, and she thought fast. "You know – I haven't had this done very often, and I'm not really used to the interpretations. In terms of putting them together into a reading as a whole. Could you – could you maybe do that? Tell me what you see here, so far?"

"I don't know your question, of course. And you shouldn't tell me." Her smile chilled Scully to the marrow. "But I can try. I can look at these cards and try to see your life entire. At least – until the death card."

"At least until death," Scully agreed, preparing to make her move.

IX. Inside

Madame Alix studied the cards for a moment, truly absorbed in them. She's a believer, Scully realized, taking advantage of the shift in her opponent's concentration to look around for the cordless phone. Good – it was on a side shelf, not too far, and certainly closer than the cell tucked down in the depths of her handbag.

"I would say that you work very hard – that in many ways, your work is the center of your existence. But not just because of what you do; the people you work with are important to you as well. One person in particular, I would guess; I'm picking up on the presence of another individual in this reading, someone who affects a great deal of your life, but whom you despair of affecting in return."

Scully blinked. Okay, that was eerie. "I'm going to get a drink of water," she said. "Should I pour you one, too? And please continue."

"That would be nice," Madame Alix said. She apparently suspected nothing, because she let Scully rise and step to the refrigerator without comment.

As Scully's hand closed around the Brita pitcher, Madame Alix continued, "This other individual has suffered greatly, just as you have; the two of you find some commonality in that. I would say that you both recognize your powerful bond. But it's subsumed in your work to an unhealthy degree. You'd both rather break free from that, but you fail to recognize this shared impulse. Or, we could say, shared desire."

Stepping to the counter, Scully carefully put the pitcher down and raised her hand, as if to take out glasses. "This is definitely food for thought."

"And the next card will tell us all about your hopes," Madame Alix said, her voice curling cruelly around the word "hopes." Probably she found it ironic, believing Scully would never live to see any such dreams realized.

Their eyes met. Scully needed her to look down. So she smiled. "Well, don't keep us in suspense."

Madame Alix looked down as she flipped over the card and announced, "Ah-hah, the Lovers. Is this a romantic –"

Scully dived for the holster, one two and it was in her hand, and thank God she hadn't snapped the fastenings shut. Because Madame Alix was already on her feet, reaching for her own bag and the weapon that was no doubt in it, but Scully kicked out, her bootheel shoving the table sharply into the woman's midsection. Madame Alix fell in a sprawl of fringe and bangles, and Scully was on her in a flash, the gun pointed dead in her face.

"You're under arrest," Scully said. "On suspicion of murder."

"How did you know?" Madame Alix seemed too astonished to even be angry.

"You're a lousy tarot reader." Then she knelt down, fixing Madame Alix in her hardest glare. "Now I have one more question for you, and you'd better give me a straight answer – where is Mulder?"

 

X. The Outcome

 

As Scully drove up to the shopping center, she saw the glowing neon sign in the shape of a hand – READINGS $5 – even before she saw the squad car lights. The world swirled in red and blue as she braked, leapt from the car and ran toward the storefront. "FBI! I called this in. The agent –"

"He's okay," said one of the cops. "We found him in the back. Trussed up like a Christmas goose, and he's got a good knock on the head, but he's all right."

"Mostly all right," said another. "He was muttering something about aliens earlier. You might want to check him out for a concussion. Keep him under observation or something."

"I think he's all right." Scully took a deep breath, calming herself. "Keep the perimeter closed off. This crime scene is probably connected to at least four murders."

They nodded and let her go, stepping through the shabby front room to see Mulder – looking little the worse for wear, except for being somewhat pissed off – sitting on a folding chair and rolling up his shirtsleeves. "Don't tell me," she said. "You came seeking insight."

He turned to her, and relief illuminated his eyes. "Scully. You're all right. When she took that card –"

"I'm all right." She squeezed his shoulder, and he placed his hand over her own. "What happened?"

"I thought other people in the 'industry' might have some insight. I'd been doing some interviews – just background research."

"And you didn't tell me, because you thought I'd find it ridiculous."

"When has that ever stopped me?" Mulder smiled. "I just wanted to wait until I had something worth checking out. That's all."

"Obviously, you had plenty worth checking out. You found the murderer," Scully said, brushing her fingertips along the bruise she found at his temple. He winced, but didn't pull away. "Why didn't she kill you?"

"See, that's the weird part of all this -- okay, the weirdest part." Mulder pointed to the front room and the tarot cards still spread out upon the table. "She gave me a reading, and the cards said I wasn't supposed to die yet. Madame Alix may be a homicidal psychopath, but she's a professional. You have to give her that."

"She gave me a reading, too. That's how she got me to let her in; she claimed that you'd purchased a personal session for your birthday."

"Are you kidding?" Mulder started to laugh. "You'd hate that."

"I just thought you'd chosen poorly." Scully hesitated. "So what did you get me for my birthday?"

Somewhat sheepishly, Mulder said, "Bath salts. They're in my car."

She sighed. "Let's go back to my place. You can give them to me there, and besides, I think we could both use a drink."

Though Mulder insisted he could drive, Scully managed to get him to ride home with her. The gift basket in his lap was obviously a store-bought creation, various scented powders and gels put together by a marketing department somewhere. Honestly, Scully enjoyed that sort of thing; after a difficult road trip or an autopsy or two, a bubble bath was a good way to unwind. But it was such a – thoughtless sort of a gift. Something that didn't seem to relate at all to the way she and Mulder were bound to one another.

Then she remembered Madame Alix and the interpretation she'd given just before the ending. Mulder gave imperfect gifts because everything he'd ever been given – love and truth and childhood themselves – had come to him with such terrible flaws. And he was good at building strong walls to hide behind; they were both master craftsmen in that regard.

The Lovers, Scully thought. The Star. The fulfillment of a promise.

Then she asked herself, Am I going to take relationship advice from a tarot reader? A homicidally insane tarot reader at that?

Well, Scully decided, Madame Alix could scarcely do any worse than Mulder and I have on our own.

They went upstairs in comfortable silence; years of seven-hour road trips had pared down what little interest either of them had ever had in idle chatter. Scully used the time to consider what to say and how to say it – how to cross a threshold neither of them had really admitted was there.

"Hope you've got some wine up here," Mulder said, rubbing his temple as he stepped into her apartment. "Something classy. Say, a box from early April?"

"We can have a drink later." She saw his eyes darken as he looked around at the detritus of the fight scene, his suppressed fear for her clear again. "There's something I want to do first."

Mulder set the gift basket on the closest table, still too busy staring at the scattered cards to pay much attention. "And what would that be?"

Scully put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him – just a soft kiss, one that he could pull away from if he chose. He didn't. Instead, Mulder breathed in sharply, then kissed her back gently.

"Hey," he whispered as he nuzzled her cheek. "I thought this was your birthday. Not mine."

"Turns out we like the same gifts." Then Scully kissed him again, and thank God, he didn't argue, he didn't have theories, he didn't ask if this was wise. Scully didn't either, not when he slipped her coat from her shoulders, or when his hands slid up beneath her sweater, his fingertips rough against her skin.

After a few minutes – enough to make her lightheaded, not enough for either of them to have lost control – she pulled back. "Okay," she breathed, "I'm going to pour us some wine. And we can sit down on the couch for a while. To – talk."

"Scully, no offense –" Mulder's lips were slightly swollen, and he looked almost boyishly happy "—but the sofa was not the relocation destination I was thinking of."

"I've waited years for you to kiss me." Scully raised an eyebrow. "You think I'm going to skimp on foreplay?"

Mulder laughed as she got the winebottle and the glasses. He came up behind her and kissed the back of her neck, sending shivers along her skin, as she worked with the corkscrew. "You seem to have a card left," he said, resting his forehead against her shoulder. "You didn't finish your reading."

"If I remember the Celtic Cross spread correctly, the final card reveals the outcome." The cork popped out, and she began to pour.

"Well, we might as well flip it over, don't you think? Find out our destinies?"

"Mulder, the cards mean whatever you believe they mean. Tarot cards don't hold powers; they just make it possible for people to realize what they want." She looked into his eyes as she handed him his glass. "And I already know."

**Author's Note:**

> OK, Mulder and Scully never got together that easily. I know and accept this. But let's face it; they SHOULD have.


End file.
